“Caedmon thinks so,” she said, frowning. “He said the Svarestri know we spy on them, just like they do on us. And that if Æsubrand was here, his mother would be doing everything in her power to make it look like he was still at court. He’d be seen riding, hunting, hawking—anything to make him highly visible. But he isn’t.”

“Which means what?”

“That’s just it—I don’t know! Caedmon thinks Æsubrand probably is away from court, just not here. So he doesn’t need anyone to cover for him. He said he could be patrolling the border, or leading war games, or on a freaking trade mission—” She threw up her hands in disgust.

“But you’re assuming the worst.”

“Do I have a choice?” she asked wildly. “After everything?”

No. She really didn’t. Aiden’s talisman protected him, but only to a degree. It meant that someone might not be able to just walk up and kill him, as they’d tried once before. But it wouldn’t do a damned thing to stop a kidnapping. And if Æsubrand ever got Aiden into his elegant hands, I didn’t think it would be long before he’d find a way to dispose of the problem—permanently.

It was, I suspected, why Claire was still here instead of back in Faerie. She’d recovered the talisman two weeks ago but had shown no signs of leaving. Maybe because Æsubrand didn’t know Earth all that well, which put him at a disadvantage here.

Not that he hadn’t managed to compensate before, at least somewhat, but Faerie had proven no safer. Some of Caedmon’s own courtiers seemed to think that a full Light Fey king sounded better than a part-human, part–Dark Fey mutt. It was probably what had Claire looking like she was about to explode.

“There must be some way to verify—” I began.

“Heidar’s trying.” Her hands twisted in her apron, and for all her power, she was suddenly just another anxious mother, desperate to ensure her child’s safety. “That’s why he went back. He’s doing a reconnaissance into the Svarestri lands—”

“What?”

She nodded, frantically. “I begged him not to, but he said he used to do it for fun as a boy. That he knew some old trails, had some contacts. That he might be able to alleviate my fears…”

And instead he’d doubled them. Now Claire was left worrying about her son and her fiancé. No wonder she’d been going out of her mind.

And I really wasn’t helping, was I?

“What can I do?” I asked simply.

“You can let me return the favor you did me,” she said severely. “When I came here in the middle of the night with a baby on my hip and half of Faerie after me! The smart thing would have been to throw me out—”

“It’s your house.”

“—and leave me to handle my own problems, but you didn’t. You refused to let me run off and possibly get myself and my child killed. You did what friends do when other friends are acting stupid and panicked and you told me so. Like I’m telling you.”

“That was a completely different situation, and you know it. Your enemies were outside—”

“You’re not an enemy, Dory!”

“I’m not an enemy now.”

Claire didn’t like that. “Last night, the only person in danger was you! Louis-Cesare—”

“Isn’t here all the time.” And might not be again. “Your eyes,” he’d said, looking a little freaked-out. And yeah, I guessed so. I’d only glimpsed myself in full-on dhampir mode once before, in that fight a month ago, and it hadn’t been pretty. Hadn’t, in fact, looked particularly human—snarling face, gleaming fangs, and glowing, demonic eyes…

Shit.

“He doesn’t need to be!” Claire said forcefully. “I was going to say that if he hadn’t been able to take care of it, we have a garden full of fey. And the elite of the royal guard at that!”

“Who might not have been enough.”

“Oh, please!” She looked me up and down critically, and didn’t seem impressed. “If they can’t handle one lone dhampir, I’ll kick their asses. And then I will.”

“You will what?”

“Handle you.”

“You’ll handle me.”

“You think I can’t?” she asked, her chin lifting.

“I think you won’t.”

“Then you don’t know me that well.”

I rolled my eyes. “I know you plenty. You’re a vegan. Cutting up meat for the fey’s meals almost makes you sick. You have all those marigolds because you don’t even like hurting bugs!”

“Faerie changes a person.”

“Not that much. And my other half is a ruthless—”

“So am I. I’ve had to learn to be. And if it will make you feel any better, if you go crazy, and for some unfathomable reason decide to attack Aiden or Stinky—and for the love of God give that child a better name—”

“I told you, Duergars have to earn—”

“—then I’ll kill you myself.”

I stopped. Because Claire had sounded like she meant it. She looked like it, too, with those usually soft green eyes hard and steady on mine.

“You will?”

“Yes. I will.”

“You’d hesitate.”

“No. Not with a child’s life at stake. Not with Aiden’s life. I’ll kill anyone who touches him.”

And that last was so cold, so implacable, that it actually sent a chill up my spine. In that moment I honestly believed my gentle roommate to be capable of murder. Even mine.

“Good,” I told her.

She nodded, letting out a breath. “Good,” she agreed, wiping her hands on her apron. “Now get down there and get rid of those damned vamps!”

Chapter Twenty

I found the vamps in the formal dining room we never used, which was usually musty and full of dust, but now smelled like a truck full of lemons had crashed into the side of the house. There were five of them. And I’d been wrong. They didn’t look like they’d just stepped out of a high-end restaurant, unless the high-end restaurant was in the nineteenth century.

There were three men and two women, all with smooth, dark hair, perfectly shined shoes, and proper black maid or butler attire. They looked like Mattel had put out a country house collector’s set: servant’s edition. Only somebody had gotten sloppy with the faces, because the perfect servants were looking a little weirded out.

Maybe because they were all bunched around the troll twins.

Or, no, it was really more of a line than a bunch. The vamp by the gleaming sideboard, who had covered his snappy outfit with a long white chef’s apron, passed a dish to the one next to him. Who passed it on to the next and so on, until it reached the boys. Who consumed it like they always did—in one gulp. And then politely waited for more.

The vamps were apparently not used to seeing a Bundt cake be wolfed down like a doughnut—hence the big eyes. Which got even bigger when one of them glanced up and saw me. And then they were all looking, heads coming up like puppets on a string as the news flashed silently between them.

And then one of them smiled.

Which was when things got a little surreal.

Not that they were difficult. Oh, no. I womaned up and went in to explain the situation, and they quickly agreed to “take their leave” as soon as they finished stuffing the twins. But they said it with smiles all around. Big, genuine smiles that made dark eyes light up and dimples pop.

It made my teeth hurt.

Broadly smiling vamps weren’t exactly common in my experience, unless they had a knife ready to slide between my ribs. So I thought I could be forgiven for flinching slightly every time one of them moved. Which, to give them credit, they caught on to pretty fast. But while most vamps would have had a little fun at my expense, like moving to different parts of the room so that I’d have trouble keeping them all in sight, these just seemed perplexed. And chagrined. Like they thought maybe they were doing something wrong.

So they tried to fix it by slowing down—way down. And by making very deliberate motions and only when they had to, which creeped me out even more, because vamps don’t move like that. And so it went until they almost weren’t moving at all, until it was like talking to a group of determinedly smiling statues.

“I, uh.” I licked my lips. “I have to go,” I told them, a little desperately. And then fled to find some lunch before I passed out.

I didn’t know why I was so hungry, considering I’d eaten enough last night for a dozen longshoremen, or one fey. But I was. Unfortunately, the kitchen wasn’t looking too promising.

In fact, it was just as well that the vamps had been keeping Claire out, because she was going to go ballistic when she saw this. Empty cabinets hung open everywhere, the sink was piled with dirty dishes, and more of the same were stacked high on every available surface. Except for the end of the table. It was covered by a dwindling pile of food, mostly desserts, ready for sacrifice to the two bottomless pits out there.

My metabolism doesn’t run so well on sugar, so I passed them up in favor of a trip to the fridge. Which was usually stuffed full, considering the number of mouths we had to feed. But today it looked more like the bad old days, when Claire had been gone and I’d been living the life of the carefree—and hungry—bachelorette.

I’d once considered myself lucky if I had a can of tuna fish and a couple of those little mayo packets in the house, but Claire had spoiled me. My stomach rumbled in dismay at the almost empty shelves. But a look in the freezer yielded a bit more bounty, and old scavenger instincts took over.

In fact, I was so busy assembling lunch or supper or lupper or whatever it was called at four p.m. that I barely noticed the chef guy coming into the kitchen. Until I turned around from the toaster to grab something from the depleted fridge and almost ran into him. He was a little shorter than the maître d’ and a little pudgier, with a double chin and a happy belly under all that painfully starched linen. Which must have been just for show, because despite the state of the kitchen, there wasn’t a speck on him. But something had upset him; the guy appeared to be on the verge of tears.